Manuscripts

Much of the work of the Whitman Archive has been focused on editing Whitman's poetry and prose manuscripts, which are located at repositories around the world. We include both poetry and prose manuscripts in this index, since it is often hard to determine the boundary between prose and verse in Whitman's manuscripts—especially in the pre-war years, Whitman habitually migrated his writing from prose to verse. Work on Whitman's manuscripts is ongoing, and we expect more manuscripts to be added over time, as we are able to complete the work of editing them. For more about our editorial policy and encoding practices for Whitman's manuscripts, see our editorial policy statement. To see and search several of Whitman's notebooks, which are not included in this manuscripts index, visit the Notebooks index.

In this index we have included "not before" and "not after" dates to give a general estimate of when the manuscript was written. Since most of Whitman's manuscripts are undated, this range is often necessarily speculative. For further specificity and explanation of the date associated with any manuscript, see the dates and editorial notes in the metadata sections at the top of the individual transcription files. To sort the index list use the "sort" dropdown.

In addition to the transcribed Whitman manuscripts listed here, we offer access to many additional manuscripts through the Integrated Catalog of Walt Whitman's Literary Manuscripts. The catalog provides access to images of manuscripts, information about holding repositories, and notes on the relationship between the manuscripts and Whitman's published writings.